Sunday, November 27, 2011

It's less than 4 weeks until Christmas and time to start embracing everything that makes this season special before it's over. To be honest, I like this time before way better than the actual celebrations. It might be all the lights. In trees, in the cities and in every window. It's a really welcome addition this time of year, when it's pitch black outside before 4 PM and the evenings feel soooo long.

It might also be the food and sweets that is only eaten this time of the year. Today I made a batch of a traditional Swedish treat, called knäck. It's super simple, extremely sweet and very tasty!

Knäck

1 part golden syrup
1 part granulated white sugar
1 part non-dairy heavy cream (I used one made of oat with 20% fat)
1/2 part chopped almonds (optional)

Bring everything except the almonds to a boil in a heavy bottomed sauce pan. Keep boiling and stirring occasionally until it has reached 120° C (248° F). Mix in the almonds if using. Now you'll have to work pretty fast, since the knäck will harden when cooling. Pour the batter into miniature muffin liners. Let cool and eat!

Friday, November 25, 2011

I got these from my mother, who had got them from her co-worker, who had bought them in Iran. They are hands down the best pistachios I've tasted, and the perfect snack after this weeks studying for exams. I hope to get into cooking again this weekend and next week, now that all the holiday cooking is coming up! There will be lots of traditional Swedish food and sweets, just like it should be. Have a nice weekend!

Monday, November 14, 2011

Lingonberries, the red gold of the Swedish forests.This evergreen plant grows in abundance in the forests and the tart little berry ripens in the autumn. That's when you go out and pick as much of them as you could possibly eat until next season, and preserve them by freezing or making jam. And even though you can make all sorts of things with them, like juice or in baking, jam is by far the most common way to indulge them. The jam is simple, and made only with lingonberries and sugar, and is a bit tart. You can also make something called "raw stirred" lingonberries, which is raw berries mashed up with sugar. These condiments are then eaten with a huge variety of things, savoury and sweet. It goes great with potatoes, pancakes, cabbage, oatmeal, cereals, pitepalt or whatever you want!

Friday, November 11, 2011

I'd never heard of crab cakes before seeing the recipe for tempeh ones in Vegan Brunch, and since I usually never had tempeh around I never made them. Until now. They're really easy to make, doesn't require any hard to find ingredients and the taste and consistency is awesome. I wasn't sure what to serve them with except the sauce that was also in the recipe, so I just put it all on top of a slice of danish rye bread along with some tomato and pickled cucumbers. A drizzel of lemon on top and there's a perfect little meal.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

One of my favourite cookbooks right now is definitely The Best Veggie Burgers on the Planet by Joni Marie Newman. It's a fantastic book and every recipe I've tried has been a success. Yesterday I made the Seitanic Stuffers which is basically a seitan burger filled with something. I filled mine with some melty soy mozzarella I had in the fridge, and they came out great! The only thing I can't grasp about this book is the burger sizes, Joni must like them huge! I always get more burgers than the recipe suggests and I even find them too big then! That's not a complaint though. Anyway, we had them for dinner on some buns and with french fries on the side and almost died of fullness. I should have listened to the book and had them with a salad, they're really filling! I had the left over burgers for lunch two days in a row, once with rice, lentils and peas, and the other day with toast.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

I managed to get my hands on some tempeh whilst in Göteborg, and started to carefully plan what to make with it. I'm not an experienced in the tempeh field - but definitely got interested when eating the tempeh strips I got when visiting the Tofurkey Factory in Hood River, OR. So when deciding what to cook, I flipped through The Best Veggie Burgers on the Planet by Joni Marie Newman, and found these awesome burgers, the Log Cabin Burger. They're described as a mix between a pancake and a sausage, which I totally couldn't resist. I decided to focus on the sweet side of it, and served it up on top of raised waffles with syrup and margarine. This was so GOOD! I can totally picture myself sitting somewhere deep inside the forest in a little cabin eating this in front of the fire. The tempeh flavour is really at it's best in this burger, now go make some!

Sunday, November 6, 2011

I spent the weekend on the west coast, in the town I grew up in, Göteborg (or to use it's English name, Gothenburg). I hung out with my family, and no catching up is complete without a lot of fika (check out the link, and learn about Sweden's holy institution of coffee and a sweet). My mother had made some candy cane brownie cookies, and even though they didn't came out very pretty, they were really tasty.

Above is two new sweets sold by one of the biggest coffee chains - Espresso House. Earlier they've had a basic chocolate ball, and now they have come up with two new varieties, one rolled in nuts (the one on the left), and the other one that has a hint of mint flavour and is rolled in candy cane sprinkles (the one on the right). They were both pretty good, with a very fluffy inside and crunchy outside. Most of all, it's nice to have some more options!

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Vegan MoFo is fun for many reasons, and let's be honest, one of them is the many giveaways. I was lucky enough to win 2 of them this year! I won the Flavor Bible over at Happy Vegan! and this wonderful mug from Vegan Dish. I love this cup already, it's HUGE, so I can use it both for beverages (although, if I drank that much coffee, I would shake for a week) and soup! The creator of the mug is Jeanette Zeis, who also does loads of other pretty ceramic things.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Hello friends! MoFo might be over but fall is continuing and winter is quickly approaching, so there's a lot of fun cooking to look forward to.

Last week I couldn't take my eyes away from everyone's posts with photos from pumpkin patches. Eating pumpkin is not very common in Sweden, so those pretty pumpkin patches are not really that available. However, since Halloween is pretty popular here as well, people do carve pumpkins as decorations. Last year, while living on the Faroe Islands, I bought my first pumpkin ever. I really liked the things I created with it then, so when I saw that the supermarket had a couple of them left from Halloween I bought one and spend the rest of the afternoon making it into purée. I ended up with 15 cups, that are now safely tucked away in my freezer. I know I want to do the pumpkin muffins from Vegan With a Vengeance as well as a pumpkin pie, but otherwise I'm not sure. Any ideas?

If you're wondering about the two weird photos up there, I just wanted to recreate this picture that I took last year in the Faroe Islands. As you can see, I wasn't successful.